Thursday, August 20, 2009

Nice Stems

This week continues to leave me with great workouts and obvious progress in my physique. Monday night's leg workout went really well, and I had minimal hamstring pain. I think I found a decent remedy to that....2 advil prior to training. I've never been much of a pain medication person, but I've been known to do whatever it takes to have a good workout. Anyway, my strength was spot on, and I hammered out some really good sets of squats to start. We did our "pared down" extension workout, which surprisingly didn't leave me as sore as I thought it would. I always feel like the workout wasn't effective if I'm not crippled the next two days. Bright and early Tuesday morning (or rather, dark and early) was my usual hamstring workout, which I seem to finally be getting the hang of by keeping my volume low. It's definitely killer to train quads at night and follow it up with hams just 8 hours later in the early morning with only one meal in between. But I'm making it work.

Last night's shoulder workout was also really great. We started off with 5x5 standing BB presses with the same weight, and believe it or not, I seem to be getting stronger with those. Don't ask me how that's possible on a contest diet, but I did 100 lbs for 5 on my last 2 sets, which I don't think I've ever done. We followed with 3 sets of DB presses, then 3 drop sets of DB laterals. By the time we got to rear delts, I was cooked, but we did 4 sets of bent over DB laterals, then 2 sets of high rep reverse cable flies and finished with 2 high-rep sets of machine lateral raises. I was completely shot, and when I tried to work on my posing, I wound up spending more time whining about how tired I was and the stupid toe cramp I had than actually posing. So I said "F" it and headed home. Today was cardio only, and I'm beat. It's looking like an extra early night for this chickie.

As far as the changes I'm seeing in my body, they seem to be coming pretty quick. I'm tighter and tighter each week, and I'm slowly getting more and more vascular (for me, that is). Even my legs, which NEVER seem to show changes until the end, are showing signs of a little bit of separation. So far, everything has been on point with the diet, and I've been sticking to the step mill primarily for my cardio. Now I can't wait to see what the scale says this weekend (note the sarcasm).